


A Lot to Love

by LordValeryMimes



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 23:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5069086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordValeryMimes/pseuds/LordValeryMimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lister appears to have made some big changes, or has he?</p><p>A prequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/mrflibbleisverycross/pseuds/mrflibbleisverycross">mrflibbleisverycross's</a> <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4377395/chapters/9935834">Very very charming</a>. Written for the <a href="http://rdficfest.tumblr.com/">Red Dwarf Fic Remix Fest</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lot to Love

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Very very charming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4377395) by [mrflibbleisverycross](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrflibbleisverycross/pseuds/mrflibbleisverycross). 



> Thanks to Rob Grant and Doug Naylor for creating these characters so I could make them get up to all sorts of smeg together.

If Arnold Rimmer had been capable of making sounds when he walked, then the sounds of angry footsteps would have been humming their way through the metal floors of Red Dwarf. As it was, Rimmer was a hologram, and incapable of eliciting any kind of audial response from the ship’s surfaces. Because he was incapable of stomping his feet, or banging his fists in anger, Rimmer subconsciously chose to move with as much pomp and circumstance as he could muster. His arms swung like massive pendulums, and his body leaned into turns with a dancer’s grace. He snaked his way through the corridors, a slender green blur as he made his way to the drive room. Rimmer was irritated, and he was prepared to unleash the entirety of his fury on a certain mechanoid. “I’ll teach that rubber-faced git to take the Cat asteroid-spotting instead of me,” he thought, menacingly as he stepped through the doorway. 

"Kryten? Are you in here?" Rimmer was using his special bossy voice, the one he only used when he really wanted to feel like he was in charge, and meant business. A voice meant only for really serious occasions that demanded the right air of authority. Of course, this was the voice that he used on a regular basis. "I want a full report on ev..." Rimmer skidded to a sudden halt as he noticed his bunkmate Lister, cozied up to the navicomp. At least, he thought it was Lister. The ridiculous haircut was right, the infuriatingly cheerful gerbil-cheeks were right, the suit however was wrong. Dead wrong. "Lister? What on Io are you wearing?"

Lister turned, a warm smile spread across his face, and Rimmer gave a very unsubtle double-take. “What kind of look was that?” He thought absent-mindedly as his eyes trailed over his bunkmate.  “And why the suit?” Rimmer looked Lister up and down, taking in the smooth lines of the pin-striped trousers and jacket, the natty little pocket square, and the stylish cravat. “What the smeg is going on?” His mind cried out in distress at this very odd development. In all the years that Rimmer had known Lister, he’d never once known him to wear a proper suit. And certainly not one that didn’t look like it had survived several nights of canteen food fights. 

"Didn't you hear me Lister? Why are you dressed like that?" Rimmer's brain worked feverishly to concoct some biting insult or clever quip to lob at Lister, but something about the sight of his bunkmate in a suit was mucking up his synapses. Rimmer shuddered when he realized what the problem was. Lister looked good. Far too good. Rimmer swallowed with some difficulty, his tongue seeming to have joined his brain and gone on strike, as Lister stood and walked toward him.

“A waistcoat.” Rimmer thought with some alarm. “Smeg, he's wearing a waistcoat,” His brain was flashing error messages, " _Warning! Does not compute!_ " 

"Hiya," Lister crooned in his Liverpudlian accent and Rimmer groaned inwardly as the tones made him shiver down to his toes. “Smeg, has he always sounded like that?” The hologram grit his teeth in frustration as he tried to get a grip on himself.

"Just thought I could use a change of pace, you know?" Lister drawled. "It's good to switch things up once in a while. Do you like it?" Lister stepped back and did a little spin. He'd traded in his ship's issue boots for a tan pair of snazzy leather oxfords. Rimmer stood gawping. His body refused to do anything else.

Lister's face began to fall. "Do you not like it?"

"It's not that," Rimmer sputtered, his tongue reluctant to release it's grip on the roof of his mouth. "I've just never seen you in anything like that before." As he spoke, his brain was wailing at him, “He looks so good! He looks so smegging good!” Lister’s figure was often masked and muted by oversized t-shirts, baggy trousers and his ever-present leather jacket. Rimmer had always enjoyed giving his bunkmate a hard time about being podgy and out-of-shape, but the finely tailored seams and crisp lines of the suit gave Lister a distractingly svelte silhouette.

"Do you like it though?"

"I suppose you look..." Rimmer struggled inwardly, to find the least complimentary term in his lexicon. "Decent." Yes, that sounded suitably blasé, and un-sexually-charged. "You look decent."

Lister's face erupted in another one of those smiles that was like the clouds parting to reveal the sun on a stormy day, and Rimmer groaned. “What is happening? This isn’t right at all. Why isn’t he insulting me? Why is he smiling at me?” He refused to even think about how Lister smiling at him, was making his ears burn, and his stomach churn.

"I was hoping you'd like it."

"Since when do you care what I think, Lister?" Rimmer clenched his jaw in exasperation. "You've always taken a near perverse amount of pleasure in doing the exact opposite of what I would like you to do. Why now do you suddenly care about my liking something you do?”

“Don’t be upset, man.” Lister fixed his eyes on Rimmer, and the hologram was unnerved by the genuine warmth in the gaze. “Look, why don’t you just sit down for a bit, yeah? I’ve got some things I want to say to you. Stuff I’ve been meaning to say for a long time.”

“Like what?” Rimmer scoffed. “If you want to tell me how I’ve got less charm and charisma than a sociopathic mongoose with Tourette’s Syndrome, you already told me that last week.”

“Look, I’m serious. Please just sit down. Please?”

Against his better judgement, Rimmer found his legs automatically bending to sit in the chair next to Lister. Lister leaned in, his hands clasped as he rested his arms on his elbows. The proximity began to alarm Rimmer as he took in tiny details: the soft shadow cast by the dimple on Lister’s chin, the fullness of his lips, the soft curls that gathered at his temples. “Smeg, I don’t want to be thinking of this. I need to get out of here, I need to…”

Rimmer’s train of thought was interrupted as Lister suddenly began to speak. “I’m really sorry the way that things have been between the two of us, Rimmer.” He tipped his head downward so that he was looking up at the hologram. There wasn’t a trace of dishonesty, or impishness in the gaze, and Rimmer found himself hypnotized by the soulful stare. “You may not know this, but I’ve always been really, really fond of you. It’s just not easy you know, being stuck together all the time, on this ship. A situation like that, it can make you a little crazy, you know? It can make you say things that you don’t really mean, or do things that you don’t really want to do. I’ve been a real smeghead, and said some nasty things, and I’m really sorry. I was really hoping that you and I could maybe, you know, have a fresh start together.” Lister rubbed his palms together and licked his lips slowly as he continued to stare up at his bunkmate.

Rimmer attempted to wet his own lips, as he greedily traced the motions of Lister’s tongue with his eyes, but his tongue had gone as dry as sandpaper. “A fresh start?”

“Yeah. You know... I really, really care about you Rimmer.”

“You really, really care about me?”

“Yeah. You know I don’t even think that I ever realized until now, just how much I do care about you.” 

“Just how much you do care about me?” Rimmer’s brain had given up trying to generate it’s own thoughts, as he numbly parroted Lister’s words back at him. It was taking all of his mental power just to process what Lister was saying to him. What was Lister saying to him? 

“Rimmer, I… I think that I might…”

Rimmer’s lips pursed in alarm, and his eyebrows made the H on his forehead jump as they shot to the ceiling, “You think that you might _what_ , Lister?”

Lister cheeks reddened as he shook his head and dropped his gaze to the floor. “No, you’re just going to laugh at me. I can’t say it. You’ll think I’m nuts.” 

“What was he about to say? Oh smegging hell what was he going to say?” Rimmer’s brain was blasted from its hypnotized state into sheer panic. “He can’t possibly be saying what I think he’s going to say, can he?”

“What is it Lister?” Rimmer managed to croak out. “You might, _What? Tell me!_ ”

“I… I think that I might… love you, Rimmer.”

Time seemed to stop for Arnold Rimmer as the sentence left Lister’s lips. He heard the “I think that...” around breakfast time.  The “I might…” around lunch. And the “love you, Rimmer,” didn’t reach him until tea. He doubled over as he received the emotional equivalent to a punch in the solar plexus. His bunkmate, his slobby, mess of a bunkmate had just professed his love to him. “That’s not the worst part though,” Rimmer thought as a wave of giddiness began to tickle at his ribs. “The worst part, is how happy I feel about it.”

“Are you alright, Rimmer?” The concern in Lister’s voice, just amplified Rimmer’s light-headedness and confusion.

“No I’m not bloody-smegging-well-alright, Lister!” Rimmer huffed into his boots as he hunched over, afraid to look up at Lister for fear it will have all been a cruel joke, and Lister would be pointing a finger at him and sing-songing, “Ha ha! Fooled you Bonehead!”

“I’m sorry, I know this must be coming as quite a shock, but… I just didn’t how else to tell you. I didn’t know what else to do.” Lister dropped to his knees and looked up into Rimmer’s face. The hologram had squeezed his eyes shut, and was breathing heavily. “You’re not hyperventilating are you, Rimmer?”

“You _love_ me?” The hologram spat out the middle word like it was a rather unpleasant discovery in a bite of fruit. “You _love_ me?” He said it again, as if he was hoping the repetition would make the statement more palatable, like an acquired taste. “You don’t love me, Lister. You’ve never loved me! You hate me! You love Kochanski! Hardly a moment goes by when you aren’t spouting off about Kochanski this, and Kochanski that.”

“Look forget about Kochanski, Rimmer. Kochanski’s long gone, and she never really cared about me anyway. It’s different with you, Rimmer.”

“How can you love me?” Rimmer blurted out as he sat back, his hands clutching at his face and his eyes wild. “Nobody loves me, Lister. Nobody has ever loved me. Especially not you!"

“Smeg, I shouldn’t have done it like this. I should have worked up to it a bit more. I’m sorry, Rimmer. I didn’t mean to freak you out like this.”

“Why, Lister? What could you possibly love about me?” Rimmer held his hands out in front of him, as if pleading for an answer, begging Lister to somehow make all of this make sense.

“You sell yourself too short, Rimmer. There’s a lot to love about you, you know?” 

“Like what, Lister? My in-growing toenails? My lofty career as a second technician with the JMC? My incredible ability to be consistently unlikable and rubbish at anything and everything?”

“No, Rimmer. You know none of that smeg matters to me. I love you because in your whole life, no one has ever treated you decently, but you still kept going. You still kept trying to live your life, and be the best that you could. I love you because even though you like ridiculous smeg like telegraph poles and Morris Dancing, you still enjoy it, and don’t give a smeg what other people think. I love you because you can be so sweet, and understanding when you let your guard down and aren’t pretending that you don’t give a smeg about anybody but yourself.”

Rimmer’s jaw slackened in disbelief, as Lister went on, listing compliment after compliment with utter sincerity.

“And on top of all of that Rimmer, you’re smegging gorgeous. The way you used to look when you'd wear that khaki JMC uniform with those tight trousers. Smeggin' hell, Rimmer. That used to keep me up nights, just thinking about how good they made your bum look.” That was more than Rimmer could take. His body went limp, and he started to slip from his seat like a pile of jelly melting in the summer heat.

“Rimmer, are you alright?” Lister looked down at his deliquescent bunkmate with some alarm.

Rimmer slithered wobbily to his feet, his face pale, and his hands buried in his curls as he pulled anxiously on them. "I need to go, Lister. This is just... I can't... I need to think."

Lister backed away, his face downcast as Rimmer staggered past him before sprinting clumsily down the corridor.

 

* * *

 

Rimmer didn’t stop until he reached a large supply cupboard on B deck. He croaked out, “Lock!” and the door swished closed behind him. He often came to this cupboard when he felt the need to calm down. He found the piles of neatly stacked and organized supplies to be soothing. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his head back as he gnawed at his lips. What had happened? Lister had told him that he loved him. Rimmer’s face grew rosy with a simulated blush as the memory replayed in his head. The hologramatic simulation of his heart was thrumming a rapid beat in his chest as he thought of Lister’s eyes gazing into his, as the words had fallen from his lips.

Rimmer slid to the floor, he rested his elbows on his knees and buried his head in his hands. He rubbed at the H on his forehead as if the motion might somehow massage some sense into his thoughts. “Can he really love me? No one’s ever loved me before. No one’s ever even said anything kind to me before. It was always, ‘Rimmer, you smeghead! Rimmer, you’re a complete bastard!’ or ‘Rimmer, why don’t you drop dead?’ People just don’t love me. It just doesn’t happen. Especially not people like Lister. Everybody likes him. Why would he love me? Why could he possibly love me?”

“Maybe, it’s because you’re all that he’s got now?” The thought made Rimmer pause. He hadn’t considered the fact that apart from the Cat and Kryten, he was the only person in Lister’s life. And he had sounded so sincere. That’s the part that was driving Rimmer crazy, the fact that for the first time since he’d known him, Lister hadn’t been joking around. Rimmer had long ago given up on the hope that he’d ever be loved, or be able to love someone. Now that things had appeared to change, now that it seemed he had an opportunity to experience love and happiness, he wasn’t sure what to do.

“ _Take it you incredible imbecile!”_ A roaring voice suddenly screamed in his head, cutting through his daze. “ _For once in your worthless life you finally have a chance of happiness with someone!_   _Someone who you genuinely love and care about!_ _You'd better damn-smegging-well take it!_   _Don't you dare pass this up miladdo, or you're going to regret this moment for the rest of your life! Just for once, can't you have one single smegging ounce of courage, and do the right thing?"_  

“Smeg it.” Rimmer muttered as he got to his feet, his back straight and his face determined. “Holly, put me in my old uniform.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was immediately enchanted when I first read Very Very Charming, and I knew I wanted to write the scene with Rimmer meeting the Lister/Camille. It proved much more challenging than I ever anticipated, trying to find a realistic way to write a Lister version of Camille getting Rimmer to the point where he was willing to put on his old uniform, presumably to please Lister. I hope I did an ok job of it. :-)


End file.
